Community Questions: October 2023

Community Questions: October 2023

Kelly Kennedy: ​Welcome to milestone episode 75 of the business development podcast. Today, we have an amazing community questions episode, some really, really great questions. Just a heads up ahead of time. We had some information we wanted to get out to the world. So if you just want to jump right to the community questions for the week.

Please bump ahead to about 11:50. That'll get you right into the show. And if you want to listen to kind of some of the, some of the highlights and stuff from the last eight months stick with us for the first little bit. You're really going to enjoy today's show. We have some really cool information. Stick with us.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development, CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to Milestone Episode 75 of the Business Development Podcast. My gosh, 75 episodes. It blows my mind. I'm sure it blows your mind a little bit. Especially if you guys have been with us from the very beginning. It's it's crazy. It's crazy to think that we are at milestone episode 75.

Today we are doing one of my favorite segments. You guys know this. It is community questions, October 2023. Before we get into it today, though, I thought that we would give you guys some really cool statistics since it is our 75th episode, we have some really cool stats now that we can actually feed out to you and let you know what we have accomplished in the last eight months.

I guess it'll be eight months next week. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but. Yeah. As of November, sorry, as of yeah, November 6th, it'll be eight months of the business development podcast. So where are we at? We are at, as of this moment today, today is Tuesday, October 24th. We are at 89, 611 total downloads since our inception on February 6th, a little less Then eight months ago, we are at an average weekly download cadence of 2000.

Plus 2000 is the average goes a little lower, goes a little higher, but on average, every single week we gain an extra 2000 downloads. We've been around eight months. We have 75 episodes as of this episode since February 6th of 2023. We release two episodes every week, and our top episode has over 14, 000 downloads.

14, 655 to be exact. That is our episode two, What to Look For in a Business Development Rep. Available on all major platforms. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music. Google podcasts, YouTube, and pretty well wherever else you find your favorite podcasts. We've had over 32 guest episodes. We have an active guest waiting list.

We're booking all the way into November at the moment. We have 42, or I guess this will be 43 business development topic shows. We have over 1000 followers on Apple podcast and Spotify. I think we're actually closing in on around 1250 at this point. We have over, over 860 LinkedIn members on our on our LinkedIn page for the business development podcast.

And we share this with over 17, 000 contacts twice a week on LinkedIn. We have a global reach at this point. We have been featured in Apple podcasts multiple times in the top 100 Canadian entrepreneur category. We have been top 10 in Korea and Trinidad and Tobago within the entrepreneurship categories.

We have been top 100 in entrepreneurship and Apple podcasts in 14 countries to date, including Brazil, Canada, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Korea, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, and Israel noteworthy achievement. We are Canada's first business development podcast, and we have an global reach at this time.

My gosh. Yeah, blows my mind, blows my mind. I could have never imagined. That this is the, the reach that we would have had with the business development podcast. When I started talking to a wall you know, eight months ago at that time, it was really just, I knew I needed to get out there. I knew I had a lot of business development advice.

I could share with the world. I knew that we had processes and procedures that just frankly worked. And I was looking for the best way to go about doing that. And I decided on a podcast, but at that time. Eight months ago, I could have never known that we would be sitting here, 75 episodes, and have impacted so many people.

It's absolutely amazing. I love getting the weekly reachouts. You know, we get so many fans reach out to us on a weekly basis, let us know how we've helped them get the job they wanted, how we've helped them build their business, how, you know, they just absolutely love. the information that we're giving to them on a weekly basis.

And I love those stories. I appreciate it greatly. It's really cool. And I could have never expected it. It wasn't what I set out to do, but I'm very thankful that ultimately this podcast is bringing benefit to the world, which is, you know, what more can really people ask for? Being able to impact the world in a beneficial way is something that has always been important to me.

And I'm very thankful that with the podcast, we have found the media medium to do it. So thank you. Thank you for tuning in with us. Thank you for sticking with us. I appreciate it immensely. And thanks for telling your friends, family, and allowing us to continue to grow at this rate. We're hoping to just continue to grow with bigger and bigger and bigger as long as we can.

And we can't do it without the support of our lovely listeners, you. So we appreciate you greatly. And thank you for sticking with us. I wanted to thank I wanted to thank our listeners first and foremost, once again, could not do it without you. Wanted to thank our amazing expert guests that have helped us to get to this point.

We have had so many amazing expert guests. I appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for taking your time to come on the show. Trust me to tell your story and to do it well. And, for providing such amazing, amazing information, not just to our listeners, but to me, I appreciate it greatly as well.

And yeah, thank you. Thank you for to the guests we've had. Thank you to the guests we have coming and thank you to all the future guests down the line can't do this show without you wanted to thank our sponsors specifically Hypervac Technologies and atWork Office Furniture, as well as Bloom Bookkeeping.

You know, thanks for trusting us. You know, getting out there and asking for sponsorship is something that we have only just started recently doing and, you know Rodney from at work as well as Colin from Hypervac, they've been listeners of the show from the very beginning. And thank you for supporting us.

Thank you for jumping on board when when we needed that help. And to all of our future sponsors, thank you as well. If you guys are considering sponsorship with us, we appreciate it. And we look forward to those discussions. I wanted to thank two people in particular. I wanted to thank. Cole Chorney, who is my right hand man at Capital Business Development, helps us out with everything we got going on, helps us with the, you know, the future show planning for the Business Development Podcast.

What do we got coming up next? What are the next things down the line? What's going on at Capital? He helps with everything and Cole couldn't do it without your support. Thank you so much for sticking with me and for continuing to help us on a weekly basis. And finally, to my beautiful fiancé, Shelby.

Shelby, couldn't do this without you. You know, the support, I know it's been hard, I know it's been up and down, producing a show and running a business is not an easy thing and asking your wife or your fiancé to kind of stick with you can be a hard ask sometimes. And Shelby steps up and she helps me where needed, even though it's not easy, even though it's hard.

And she's currently carrying, you know, my baby boy who's due to be born here coming up in November, November 25th is the due date. So lots going on here in the Kennedy household. But yeah, big shout out to my fiance, Shelby couldn't do it without her. And thanks for the support. Okay. So wanted to speak one more before we kind of clip into the show. I know this has been a long entry. 75 is is a big deal though. So I think I wanted to have some things to talk about. I wanted to provide a little bit of inspiration today as well to those of you who are listening to the show and you are a business expert and you've been on the fence about what you want to do about that, how you're going to put that expertise out into the world.

I want to take a minute today and encourage you to start your own podcast. I could have never expected that this is where the business development podcast would go, you know, we were an award winning show at four months could have never expected that, you know, and it's not just, you know, yeah, sure, I'm sure it has a lot to do with the amount of effort we put in.

I'm sure it has a lot to do with the topics being a topic in demand. But, you know, for those experts out there, and I've talked to many of you who've reached out and said, Kelly, how do I do this? How do I start my own show? Look, just start. Just start. Write down a show plan, get a little bit of equipment, and just record yourself talking to a wall for 15 20 minutes and put that show out to the world.

And then do it again. And then do it again. And again. And you know what you're gonna find? There's going to be people who love what you're doing. They're going to listen. They're going to tune in week over week over week. And the next thing you know, you are going to have a podcast that is approaching a hundred thousand downloads, and you're going to be incredibly thankful for that opportunity.

And, just trust me. If you're on the fence about this, if you're wondering, how do I do it? How do I even get this out? You do it one show at a time. You get to 75 episodes by recording one show at a time and holding yourself to it and sticking with it and dedicating that time and making sure that you don't want to let your fans down.

You don't want to let down the people who are gaining benefit from the show. I've been able to consistently put out 75 shows without missing one show to date. Does that mean that I will never miss a show to date? No, I can't make that commitment, but I've made that commitment to today. And I get it because there's people who look forward to this show on a weekly basis, and there will be people who look forward to your show on a weekly basis as well.

So I encourage you, if you are on the fence about what to do for 2024, cause it's coming up quick, pick up a mic. And start talking to it and show the world and teach the world your expertise because there's no better way to give back than to, than to teach people, than to educate people on what you know, there's no better way. So if you're an expert and you're getting, I'm getting you today and you're wondering what the heck you're going to do.

Pick up a mic, put out a show of your own. You can do it. I believe in you. And if you have any questions, reach out. I'm more than willing to give any advice that I can. Okay. All right. And one last thing before we get into our episode today, we have a Halloween special releasing on Sunday. I am incredibly, incredibly thrilled to have one of my favorite, my favorite authors, Brennan Storr.

He's he's a Canadian. He's actually from BC. He he put out an absolutely amazing book called A Strange Little Place. It's creepy. It's awesome. It's about Revelstoke, British Columbia. And I loved it. I absolutely loved his book. And I reached out and I said, Brennan, I want to have you on for our Halloween special.

And he agreed. So 100%, we have a really cool Halloween special where we're going to talk about authorship and a really creepy, awesome book called A Strange Little Place. And that's coming up this Sunday. So look forward to that coming on Sunday, the Business Development Podcast Halloween Special 2023.

Okay! Thank you, thank you. I know this has been a bit of a long winded one. Today was... I had, I had some feelings regarding today. 75 is crazy! I, I hadn't even really put two and two together until I sat down to plan this show today and Yeah, it's been a long time coming and I'm really looking forward to 100, but it's crazy.

75 episodes as of today. Alright! So let's get into it today. I promised you community questions. We have a few really good ones. They, they are, they are hard. I did not get easy questions. So you know, if you're listening to this episode today and you're wondering how the heck do I get questions on community questions episode for Kelly?

Yeah, send them on over podcast@capitalbd.ca, subject line, community questions, and we try to do this. At least once a month. And I'm hoping as the show grows to be able to do it twice a month or even more, if we start to get more and more questions coming in. So please, if you're listening to the show and you have business development oriented questions, shoot them to me podcast@capitalbd.ca.

All right, so our first question comes from listener Conrad Leger, and he says, How do we get the most out of the seller doer model? I know you focus on separating account management and BD, and that's the best way to do it. However, I work in an industry where project managers are expected to do BD as well.

How can I be more effective when I wear many hats? Awesome, awesome question, Conrad. And I get it. I get it. I understand. There's a lot of businesses that operate this way. And well, yeah, I'm trying to change the paradigm, and I'm trying to convince people that, you know, I think potentially there's a better way to dedicate a full time BDE and have someone else managing your accounts.

I get it. When we're in construction or when we're doing things like that, sometimes we are managing the client at the same time. So, how can we do this more effectively? Conrad, the best piece of advice that I can give you is is if you are expected to do some business development or account management, we have to dedicate the time to do it.

There's no two ways about it. You can't just fly by the seat of your pants and expect to be successful at it. It's something that takes time. And you know, I've talked with this with my employees to where, when we've been trying to kind of figure out our models How we can improve on them. It always falls down to the only way to really be successful in business development or account management is it's a few things, but you have to number one, dedicate a certain amount of time to the effort.

And then number two, you have to have a structured process that will make you the most effective with that time, right? We can, we can dedicate two hours to business development. But if we don't do the business development effectively in that time, it's not going to help us. So what I would suggest to you, Conrad, is go back.

Listen to the previous episodes of the show, where we talk about the various steps of the business development process, figure out how you can dedicate, let's say, let's say if possible. If possible, in my mind, the best way to do it would be to be able to dedicate an entire day a week to the business development process.

I understand that's probably asking a lot if you're managing a project as well and trying to deal with the operation. I know. I know I'm asking a lot from you, Conrad. But, I think the best way to go about doing this, if you have to split out the time, is to set aside an entire day. Why do I say an entire day is set aside?

Because it's easy to wrap your head around a day. Right? It's a lot harder to wrap your head around two hours here, four hours there, one hour here to dedicate to business development. It will just fall by the wayside. It just gets almost a bit too hard to manage. So if you have to wear multiple hats, you need to dedicate, I would say, at least eight hours a week would be ideal.

I get that's asking a lot. You know, if you can try for eight, but at least try to set aside half a day to a day per week where you can Where you can dedicate some serious time to the business development process. Because if you can dedicate the time to the business development process, you are going to get the results.

There's no two ways about it. If you make, if you spend eight hours a day doing your digital introductions, updating your CRM, making your phone calls, asking for meetings. It's inevitable. You are going to get some. You are going to get some. However, if now you're splitting that time up over like an hour here, four hours there, three hours here, you may not even know where in the process you are.

It starts to get really convoluted. So my recommendation would be given the way that you're doing things at the moment would be to do your best to set aside six to eight hours once a week, every week, set the day the same if possible, or at least in your calendar, have it set up where you know that this block of time is now dedicated to business development and focus your time following the process.

Like I said, doing your digital introductions. Updating your CRM, making the phone calls, getting those face to face meetings, attending those meetings, right. And asking for that business because there's no replacement for the time. And I get, that's why, that's why I say like, you almost have to have somebody dedicated to that business development role or dedicated to that account management role, because if you start to try to split that time up, I understand what I'm asking you to do is hard because you're already busy.

You're already, your time is already taken doing project or doing your project management. In my mind, it's actually not even really fair. It's not fair at all for your employer to be asking you to do project management and business development, even though I understand that that's how it goes, or I understand that like you might be expected to attend those meetings.

I think that, you know, any, any employer worth their salt, especially if they're running large projects should be willing to dedicate some time or a person to business development, right? It's, it's just not really reasonableto task your operations team or your business or your project management team to handle the business development as well, because frankly, your time is, you know, I mean, that's not even your skill set, really, your skill set is to handle the project and make sure it gets done on time and on budget and to the client satisfaction, frankly, in my mind, that's enough, but I get it.

I get it. We have to wear many hats sometimes in the organization. So if that is your case, and you are having to wear many hats, do your best. Thank you. To try to dedicate a good block of time per week to it. Like I said, ideally it would be a full day. If you can't, if you can't do a full day, figure out how many hours you can and, and try to get as much done in that, in that, with the business development process as you can in that time.

But that would be the best advice, Conrad. There's no, I wish I had a better answer for you, man. There's, there's no replacement for the effort. And we've run into this at Capital, right? Where we've talked about how can we do this better? Can we do this more efficient? Can we do this faster? Can we, like, the reality is, it takes time.

Good business development takes time. But if you follow the process, you will get results. There's no two ways about it. But you have to follow the process. And you have to take the time to follow the process correctly. Thank you, Conrad. That was an amazing question. And I really appreciated you writing into us.

Our next question is from Gokul Ravindran. Gokul is a mechanical engineer in India. Shout out to our listeners in India. Appreciate you. Appreciate our international listeners. He works several side gigs and he now wants to make a career in BD. Well, congratulations Gokul. BD is an absolutely amazing career.

He's identified a clear need. For BD and startups, he, he sees a gap in, in some of the business ventures that he's been working with. But he said, how can I convince a startup? They need a BD rep regardless of the size of the company. Cause what he's saying is a lot of these startups are budget cash strapped, right?

I get it. We deal with startups here too. Yeah, they are cash strapped and typically you're right. It is, it is the founder of that startup who is typically doing the BD for the company, cause they're trying to do everything on a budget. One of the solutions, Gokul, that we have, you know, ran into here, because Capital, we have, we have been fortunate enough to work with some startups through grant funding.

So, you know what I mean? Sometimes there's organizations that are willing to give grants to startups to, to cover you know a third party business development support or something along those lines. So, that would be where I would start. I would start by trying to identify wherever you are, if there are grants that will support business development with startups.

Why? Because... It's a lot easier to come to your founder and say, Hey, you know, there's a grant available and I have a service that could help you. Would you like to discuss it? Because we can either reduce the total cost that you have to pay or take some of that burden off of you. And we can provide, you know, X number of return in return.

So that's a better way to go about doing it. The other side, if you wanted to get creative with them you could potentially offer different pricing strategies that maybe are based on results or based on when they can get cash. And I get that that's not realistic for like 90 percent of companies, but it's an option for you to take a look at.

You know, The best thing you could probably do, Gokul, and, and, you know, my recommendation to you would be to still go out, you know try to book meetings with some of these founders that you're working with, and just introduce yourself, introduce what you can do for them, and be open to having an open conversation on how you can help them, because I think you'll find that if you're convincing and, and they believe that you can support them with business development and, and that you're the right person for the job, they are going to be open to creative solutions.

And so I think you need to be open to various creative solutions. Don't just be a one track mind. This is my cost. This is the package I put together for you and you take it or leave it this way. This is not the best way to handle some of these projects, right? And this is definitely not the best way to interact with your customers.

What we've learned at Capital is the best way to do this is to work with our customers and to chat with them about what their needs are, what their goals are, and then put together plans on how we're going to accomplish that. Because in that case, we have a win win scenario. We have a customer who's going to get what they want, or at least we're going to let them know what we can deliver to get close to what their target goals are.

And we know that we can meet that goal. So we're going to be happy. We're going to be able to deliver a great result. The customer is going to be happy because we're delivering the result that they were hoping for. And you get a win win scenario. So my, my advice to you, Gokul would be to find win win scenarios with these people, figure out with these founders, with these startups, what is going to help them the most and how you can deliver that.

And if you can deliver that, how they can renumerate you in some way, whether that be immediately, whether that be a retainer, whether that be a project based outcome, but figure out win win scenarios for you and the client. That is. going to make you infinitely more successful, especially when you're approaching these people, and especially when their cash drop, because they're going to need help.

They're going to need you to be reasonable, and they're going to have deliverables that they hope that you can provide for them. So figure out how you can meet those deliverables, figure out a payment structure, that's going to work for you. And I think you're going to have the best result with your client.

Thank you so much. That was a really hard question, but I, and I get that. I get that. It has a lot of answers, but I hope that this did answer this for you, Gokul. All right. And we have sort of a three part question here from Chris Ecklund. Chris is an amazing contributor to the Business Development Podcast.

We appreciate him greatly. He he reached out to us actually when he first got into business development. So he's been with us kind of from the beginning and we appreciate him. And thanks, Chris, for continuing to give us amazing questions. This was, this was good and it definitely made me think. So I appreciate the questions, Chris.

His first question is, Kelly, I've collected over 250 people now in the weekly follow up phase. The rate of adding people to the weekly follow up has greatly exceeded the rate at which I've been able to disqualify them. How do I make this more manageable? Ha ha ha! First off, congratulations. Wow. Good for you, Chris.

I know you've been hammering this. Chris got a new, a new position in a, in a, in a higher level BD role, which is super cool. And, and obviously you've been working your butt off. If you have 250 in the weekly contacted stage, yeah, you must be like burning out. I've had this, I've, I've actually addressed this with my employees more than once.

Because you're absolutely right. Having 250 people, Chris, in the weekly follow up stage is excessive and, frankly, impossible for you to be able to keep up with consistently without burning yourself into the ground, okay? What I want you to do is I want you to take that back and bring that down to something a little more manageable.

If you're dedicating 5 days a week to your calls I think, I think 20 a day is reasonable. I really do. I think you're going to get amazing, amazing results with 20 a day. I think, frankly, you could probably get amazing results with 15 a day. So if you are, if you are committed to this, I would say let's reduce that 250 down to about 60.

Let's let's go there. Let's let's run that for a few weeks or a month and let's see what kind of results you get. You really need to base it off of what are the results. That you want to get how many meetings can you even do with the company you're working at? Right? Like you are time limited. Your operations team is time limited.

Why don't we figure out how many meetings that we need to book and work backwards from that? I think that might be a better avenue for you, Chris, but I think it's probably realistic for you to knock that weekly contacted stage down to about 60. I think you'll get really great results with 60, frankly, and you know, I mean, you'll probably already have more meetings than you can, than you can handle if I'm wrong.

And that's not the case. And, you know, I get it. If we're dealing with some of these higher level companies, it can take six months. It can take 26 weeks of reach out. I get it. I've been there, done that. So, you know, I mean, I don't completely know the size of the companies that you're working with, Chris, but if we're talking like medium sized companies, I don't really think that you need to deal with much more than about 60 on a weekly basis.

And I think in there, you'll be able to disqualify a good number of them after, after a couple of weeks, and you'll be able to move new companies in as you disqualify. And I would just give yourself a cap instead of just having this unlimited cap, which is going to burn you into the ground. Give yourself a little cap.

Say, you know what? 60 is good. If you can then split that out between a team, maybe you can add up to 100 or more between a team of people if, if there's more of you, but if it's just you, I don't think it's, I don't really think it's realistic for you to be able to handle much more than 60 in a week. And that, that allows you to break it down fairly over a day.

And if you want to do more, some days, great. If you want to do less, some days, great. Feel yourself out and how that call cadence is treating you for the week. Okay. But yeah, immediately I want you to reduce that 250 weekly call out to like probably 60 and then feel that out. If you think you can add more, add more.

If you think maybe you need to knock it down a little bit more, knock it down a little bit more, but you're going to be much more effective if you're not burnt out and frankly dreading 250 calls a week. My gosh, man. Commendable. But yeah, I, I, I feel for you. Cause I couldn't imagine sitting down and being like, crap, I have to call out 250 calls this week.

It's just. It's too much. It's too much for task of anybody. So immediately knock that back. Let's, let's feel that out, Chris. And let's see where you land. But I think you're going to find that with 60... You're going to get, you're still going to be landing the meetings you need. You're still gonna be landing probably a lot of meetings.

And it's going to be enough. And you have to remember too, that you have a team around you, right? It's not just you, it's very unlikely. Not just you anyway, I guess I shouldn't speak for you. But most of the time when you're having meetings, you have an operations team, maybe you have higher level executives that attend these meetings with you and you've got to kind of.

Recognize that they're probably not prepared for, even if you were, like you said, incredibly successful. And suddenly you landed 10 meetings, 15 meetings in the next three weeks, dude, you're going to burn out, you're going to burn out your team. They're going to be upset, right? We have to figure out what is realistic even for a team.

What is realistic on the meetings front and work backwards from that? I think, you know what I mean? I think frankly, three meetings a week is a lot for a lot of people. And it's draining and especially if they're high level meetings. So, you know, talk with your team, figure out what is realistic for them.

And say, Hey, you know, like if we had like two meetings a week, would that be good? I think most companies are probably like, yeah, two's great. And then you can work backwards. Okay. If two's great, then we need eight a month. Let's work backwards from eight. How many calls is going to take you per meeting?

I know at capital, depending on kind of what we're sitting at the average, it can range depending on the size of company, but for most medium sized companies, you should be booking a meeting roughly with every about 15 to 16 calls. So if that's the case, you'll be able to kind of. Figure it out. Okay. If it's only going to take me 15, then 60 is going to book me for so.

Right. And work it out, work it out from there and figure out how many meetings you can book into the future. Anyways, congratulations, a solid effort. Great, great work. Great work. Yeah, cap it out, cap it out because you you're right. You can't, you can't just keep adding to the weekly contacted stage.

An unrealistic amount. It's just not real. You're not going to be able to do it. At least not consistently. And frankly, you're going to burn yourself out with phone calls. Alright, and he had a part two. So he said, okay, part two. What do I do when I have more lead generation methods than I have time for? So right now, he's doing door to door, he's doing call lists, he's doing events, he's doing networking, LinkedIn, weekly follow up calls, professional organizations he's a part of.

My gosh, Chris, you must be like one of the highest performing people I think I've ever seen. Congratulations and great effort. First off, great effort. But yes we need to, we need to knock this back. This is just way, way, way too much. So with your lead generation methods, you know, at capital, we really, we really rely on primarily just the two.

We, we bring on networking. We love networking. We don't do it all the time. Frankly, we just don't have time. We work with different clients and we have lots to do. So finding time on like a weekday to run out and do a networking event is only when we can. We typically rely on the digital introductions through our LinkedIn.

And we rely on, you know, our detective work to figure out the phone calls, to do the follow up calls, because we find that this is a really effective way to get to the meetings. So if you're just trying to get to the meetings, which, you know, with most of us, that's what we're trying to do. You don't need all of those lead generation efforts, Chris.

It's kind of like we talked about before. Like let's say that you have a thousand, a thousand people in your digital introduction stage. You know, it's going to take you like forever to find the contact information for these people to move them in. At some point, you got to kind of balance it out. So why don't you figure out what are the most effective ones for you personally?

Like if networking is super effective for you, then absolutely keep doing that. I know the follow up calls, you have to do the follow up calls whether you like it or not. So, You know, figure out two or three that are going to be really effective for you and focus some time on that. And if you want to maybe throw some in from time to time, great.

That's what we do at capital. You know, we attend trade shows when we can, we attend networking events when we can, we have great, great relationships with the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, where we try to attend their events and have a good time. But. We do this when it makes sense for us, but most of the time, what we're doing is our digital introductions, we're making our digital reach, we're doing our detective work to find the contact information, we're doing our target research, and we're identifying the right people and making direct contact, asking for a meeting, attending meetings, asking for next steps, right?

This is... The goal is the same. You know, the reality is a lot of these networking events, they're not as fruitful as we'd like, we'd like them to be. It's just the way it is, right? There's, there could only typically be a handful of people that could ever buy what you need at most of these events. So it's like, if you have to kind of identify them, pick them out.

Targeted research is probably still going to be a better way for you to get the results you want, right, Chris? So in my mind, I think you need to cut it back. Don't worry about doing everything. Maybe, you know, sprinkle in something once a month, but you know, fall back on your digital introductions, your LinkedIn stuff, your follow up calls, asking for the meetings.

I think this is going to be the most effective for you. Like I said, I, I hope, I hope that actually what we're doing here is giving you a little bit of time back. To be just more effective at the few things that you should be doing instead of being a shotgun approach and being, you know, mediocre at 18 things, let's get really, really good at two or three.

Let's get, let's make sure that those 60 calls that we make now are really, really good calls are, you know, we're not burned out. We're not stressed out about them. We're happy. We're, I don't, I can't imagine you being happy making 250 calls, right? Like We have to worry about our own mental health and how we're going to handle this in a way that is going to be effective for us because let's get real if you're making 250 calls but you're just you're burnt out you're in a bad mood how they're not going to be as effective as the 60 calls where you're prepared for them and it's it's in a reasonable amount and you're not burned out and you're in a good mood and you're confident about it right confidence is everything we talk about this all the time confidence is key and You can't be there if you're not feeling good, and I can't imagine you feeling good with this level of effort.

It's just got to be mentally very draining, so I'm literally telling you to just tone it back a little bit. You're going to be effective, and I know you're kind of trying to prove yourself in a new role, but trust me, burning yourself out like this is not the way to do it, okay? Alright, and it's part 3, and this is where I was really feeling for him, because you could tell, just with these words, he says, Even if I could keep up with all these lead generation methods, I'm limited with what time I even have to input this data into the CRM.

Even at 5 minutes of contact, that's a ton of time. How do I manage this? And I'm feeling for you, Chris. I really am. I'm feeling for you, man. I get it. I get it. You're absolutely right. How in the world are you even keeping up with the data entry from all those calls? Like you must be working like 12 hours a day.

I can't even imagine my friends. So please just tone it back. That's all you got to do. That's all you got to do. Pick, pick a reasonable amount, do a reasonable amount of things, but do them really, really well. Put all your effort into it and you're going to be successful. Follow the steps we talk about, follow the steps, right?

If for those of you that are just listening I have a show that's called the eight steps of active marketing. Go back, listen to that show and follow the steps. And you're going to find yourselves being very, very effective and being able to be more efficient with your time. Right. But yes. So.

You're absolutely right, Chris. It's a ton of time. And, and the best way is going to be to, to limit this, limit this. Let's take it back. Let's take it back. What, what I always tell our guys is that you want to be, you want to limit. Limit the amount of calls to probably about 60. This is typically where we're hitting with capital in order to be efficient.

And once again, it depends on how many days we're dedicating to it as well. Right? I'm assuming that you're dedicating probably five days a week. I imagine you're in a full time BD role. And if you're dedicating five days a week, then absolutely. Making 15 calls a day, 20 calls a day. Very reasonable, very, very easy to accomplish and has a huge amount of impact if you can do it every week consistently, but.

Figure out what you can do consistently, Chris. This is what's most important. Being able to consistently follow a structure or a business development plan, and being able to do it week over week over week in a consistent fashion is what is going to make you the most effective over time. Sporadically making 250 calls is not as effective as making 15 calls every day.

It's just not. It's not. And it never will be because it's just not realistic. It's not consistent. You can't do that consistently. And if you can just consistently hold yourself to the process and limit yourself to a realistic amount of inputs, a realistic amount of contacts, a realistic amount of data entry and CRM entry, but you do it all the time and you don't miss a day and you don't skip a day.

You do it. All the time, you are going to have consistent results. You're going to be able to book consistent meetings and mark my words. You are going to move up in your organization because being able to consistently deliver is much better than being able to deliver, you know, once in a blue moon or being able to like deliver sporadically, right?

If you can show that, yeah, I'm able to book two meetings a week, three meetings a week, every week consistently, for the most part, that is going to make you a much more valuable business development person over time. Okay. All right, that takes us to the end of our community questions episode. Just wanted to give a shout out.

First out, like I said before, before the show, we were talking about it. We are now accepting sponsors. So we are very thankful to have Hypervac Technologies, atWork Office Furniture, Bloom Bookkeeping. We appreciate you. If you're listening to this show and you want to, you want to sponsor with us, you want to have a sponsorship advertising.

Reach out to me, podcast at capital bd. ca. Let's have a discussion. Let's figure out if we're a good fit for your business. The reality is we might not be a good fit for all businesses. So definitely open to having that conversation, learning more about kind of what your goals are and seeing if we can fit that bill.

Also wanted to mention that we, we offer, or I specifically offer business development coaching. So if you're a high performance business development rep, or you're a company that's looking for somebody to maybe chat with your individuals to talk about process, to talk about how to be more effective at business We offer coaching sessions.

They typically run about an hour and a half. There is pre-work and post-work on both sides. So let me know if you would like to chat about this and I can send you a quote and if you just want some help. Capital Business Development, my company, we offer complete business development solutions.

We can come in with you. We'll work backwards from your goals to make sure that we can put together a plan that will we'll get you the meetings that you need. We'll get you the outreach and the advertising and you know, the visualization will shout you from the rooftops and we'll be able to do that very effectively for you.

So if you need direct business development support reach out to me info@capitalbd.ca or podcast@capitalbd.ca and we will make sure that you get looked after. All right. Shout outs today, Andy Baqone, Caroline Mantel, Al Gensitskiy, Aaron Haberman, David Fair, Ken Gee, Colin Harms, Rodney Lover, Conrad Leger, Gokul Ravindran, and Chris Ecklund.

We appreciate you. Thank you so much for sticking with us and thank you for sticking with us today. This has been Milestone, Episode 75 of the Business Development Podcast. We will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.